SEITENSTETTEN
Benedictine abbey in the diocese of Sankt Pölten (Lower Austria).
It was founded around 1100 as a seat of Augustinian Canons, but its founder, Count Udalcalco of Stille and Hefti, invited Benedictine monks from Göttweig Abbey in 1112. By 1114 it had become an independent abbey. The church was first dedicated in 1116. Already in mid-1116, a school existed, even for external students; however, in 1814 a public gymnasium with a boarding school was opened, which soon gained great renown. After its suppression by the Nazis (1938–45), it is today in full recovery. The abbey possesses a notable library, a museum (over 600 paintings), a medal collection, a coin cabinet, and a treasury. It has charge of 14 incorporated parishes.
The present church is Gothic (choir c. 1300); the three naves are earlier, from 1254, but it was partially rebuilt from 1630 onward and completely Baroque-ized in 1677. The altars date from 1690–1703, as do the rear side chapels. The cloister is also a Baroque reconstruction. The convent, already partly renewed since 1630, was transformed and rebuilt according to a grand plan by J. Munggenast and J. G. Hayberger between 1719 and 1749. The main façade measures 160 m.; it has five courtyards and the church at its center; the monastery entrance has three naves, the staircase three flights; the two-story library was frescoed by P. Troger (1741); noteworthy is the refectory with paintings by J. M. Schmidt, and the marble hall with frescoes by Troger. The ensemble forms a typical complex of the great Austrian Benedictine abbeys.
Among the incorporated parishes, mention should be made of the sanctuary of Sonntagsberg (740 m. in height) dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity; a chapel in 1440, a Gothic church in 1490, it was transformed into a splendid Baroque structure between 1706 and 1717 by the renowned architects J. Prandtauer and J. Munggenast. The dome contains a grand fresco by D. Gran, one of his major works; the interior and furnishings are in Baroque style; the treasury is of interest. — Vedi tav. XVII.
SEITZ, LUDOVICO
Painter, b. in Rome on 11 June 1844, d. there on 11 September 1908, son of the painter Alessandro Massimiliano, who had been a pupil of Cornelius in Munich.
He continued in Rome the tradition of the Nazarenes, complicating it under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites and German Romanticism, which led him to Gothicize his forms, as is clear in the decoration of the German Chapel in the Basilica of Loreto (1892–1902), replete with lace-like tracery, carvings, pinnacles, and openwork. Other memorable works by him in Rome include the decoration of the apse of S. Ivo dei Brettoni, scenes from the life of St. John Nepomucene in a chapel of S. Maria dell’Anima, and the cartoons for the great window of the same church; the life of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Galleria dei Candelabri in the Vatican, where he also restored the frescoes of the Borgia Apartment and the Sistine Chapel. He worked in Treviso in the cathedral, painting four choir frescoes, and in Padua at S. Antonio; abroad he was involved in the large-scale pictorial decoration of the cathedral of Diakovar in Slavonia, worked in the cathedral of Freiburg, and in the chapel of Prince Fürstenberg at Heiligenberg on Lake Constance.
A painter of sincere artistic enthusiasm, he sought by every means to resist the encroaching veristic naturalism and took refuge in the past, studying even the techniques of 15th-century painting; this led him to possess a craftsmanship admirable in many respects.